One Train, Swapped Bags, Reddit and a Hunt to Find the Owner

The story.

Lily Ray and her husband Adal took a train from Vienna to Budapest. When they got off they grabbed their bag and headed to their Airbnb.

But once they arrived, they realized they had made a big mistake. The bag they’d grabbed off the train wasn’t theirs. It belonged to someone named Brian.

So who’s Brian?

Well that’s the thing. They had no idea. But they knew his name from his laptop and that he was a CrossFitter thanks to a shirt from CrossFit Werk in Berlin, Germany. So they took to Reddit’s CrossFit community.

“Help! Accidentally took the wrong bag on a train from Vienna to Budapest and the bag we took by mistake (matching ours) is a CrossFitter named Brian! It has his laptop! He has a shirt from Berlin CrossFit Werk. Hoping this works and we can bring it back to him (and that he has ours).”

That’s a terrible start to vacation.

Coincidentally, Brian did have their bag. He noticed right away and dropped it off at the train station lost and found. But Lily and Ray kept sleuthing all over the Internet, scouring for Brian the mystery CrossFitter.

And everyone on Reddit joined in to help, asking Lily all kinds of questions about his CrossFit gear, hoping to nail down what box he belonged to.

“I don’t know anything about him except what kind of laptop he has, his underwear and socks, and the fact that he takes vitamin supplements. He has medium blondeish hair and his girlfriend has long blonde hair and they both had CrossFit stuff on. Both blonde and fit like surfers. Probably 25ish.”

24 hours later…

Brian came home from a night out in Budapest, hopped on the CrossFit subreddit, and stumbled upon Lily’s post. They linked up, gave Brian his bag, and now everyone has clean socks and underwear again.

Maybe now that he has his gear back, Brian can drop-in to some CrossFit boxes in Budapest.